Road to the Oscars Review: ‘Oppenheimer’ is a Chilling Cautionary Tale About Modern Warfare

Every year, in the time between when the Oscar nominations are announced and the actual Oscars ceremony is held, OFM movie reviewer and associate editor Julie River tries to watch all the movies nominated for best picture that year. In the years since the pandemic, this has become easier, as a lot of the movies are now on streaming.

So far, she hasn’t made it through all of the nominees since the category expanded from five nominees to as many as 10, but this year, she intends to pull it off and write reviews of each movie as she goes through them. She already saw and reviewed American Fiction as part of the Denver Film Festival, and she already saw Barbie, and it was reviewed by fellow OFM writer Ivy Owens. OFM writer Owen Swallow also already reviewed Poor Things. That leaves seven movies for her to watch and review. Can she make it through all 10? Find out on OFM’s Road to the Oscars!

Rating: 98/100

I saved the biggest one for last, the movie with the most nominations at this year’s Oscars and the movie that’s all but guaranteed to walk away with the Best Picture Oscar this year: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

I have certainly been a Christopher Nolan fan since early in his career. Memento was one of my favorite films in college, and I watched it repeatedly. Inception is undoubtedly a brilliant film, and Nolan’s Batman trilogy was exactly what I wanted to see out of Batman movies, even if the third one ended the saga on a weak note. That being said, I hardly think that Nolan is incapable of doing wrong. I think people often forget his 2002 remake of the Norwegian film Insomnia which, ironically, put me to sleep. And Dunkirk, though ambitious, was a bit of a snoozer as well. So I felt like there was certainly a chance that I could go either way on Oppenheimer.

I feel like everyone knows the story of this film by now, but let me run it down a little bit. The movie follows the real-life figure J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), one of the world’s greatest theoretical physicists who became infamous as the “father of the atomic bomb.” Oppenheimer was recruited to help the United States build a weapon of mass destruction during World War II, which he did, but once the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer started to regret his decision to assist in the bomb’s creation. That regret, combined with Oppenheimer’s known sympathy for left-wing causes, led to suspicions that Oppenheimer was a traitor or a secret agent, and a witch hunt began to bring him down.

Admittedly, this is another World War II movie and I already stated in my Zone of Interest review that I’m longing for the year when none of the Best Picture nominees take place during a World War. But this is a little different because it’s hardly war propaganda. Quite the opposite, Oppenheimer is about one of the worst war crimes that the United States ever committed and the man who would have done anything to undo the horrific action taken against Japan.

I have one very minor gripe in terms of the historical accuracy of this movie, and I’m not going to call this a “spoiler” because it’s about a real event in world history. The movie doesn’t really do a good job of pointing out the fact that Japan was ready to surrender as soon as the Russians entered the war and, in a lot of ways, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was done so that the U.S. could end the war instead of Russia. There’s one brief and vague allusion to this where Oppenheimer says that he has now been told that “we bombed an enemy that was essentially defeated,” but I feel like that doesn’t go far enough. It would go a lot further to drive home how horrible these bombings were if the movie made it clearer that Japan was on the verge of surrender rather than giving one blink-and-you’ll-miss it nod to that fact.

Much like Memento brilliantly found a way to tell an entire story backwards, Oppenheimer does something even more ambitious in that it starts at both the beginning and the end of the story and works its way back to somewhere in the middle. That’s a pretty hard feat to pull off and make work, but through careful editing and the use of black and white for the scenes that are moving backwards, the film clearly delineates what is happening when.

Nolan’s movies are more known for their plots and magnificent cinematography than they are for the performances of their actors. That said, Oppenheimer is so packed with big-name stars—all the way down to the minor roles—that it almost seems unfair to other movies. Just going down the list it has Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, David Dastmalchian, and … wait, Casey Affleck? Didn’t we cancel him after he was hit with several sexual harassment claims? Yikes.

As far as the performances go, Cillian Murphy simply melts into the role of Oppenheimer. (Although, with his short haircut, he kept bringing David Byrne to my mind.) Robert Downey Jr. puts in a stellar performance playing the vindictive Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss and, as a big MCU fan, I didn’t see the man who played Tony Stark in this movie; I saw Lewis Strauss. But perhaps the most compelling performance in the film comes from Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s long-suffering wife Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. The scene where she’s questioned about her activities with the Communist party is one of the best performances in the whole film.

As far as the awards go, Oppenheimer is likely to walk away with a whole mess of them. The film is basically considered a lock for Best Picture which, admittedly, is a reminder that the Oscars are far too predictable. It’s also considered to be a lock for Nolan to win Best Director. A lot of times directors are given these awards more to reflect a whole history of great work rather than for the particular film they were actually nominated for, such as when Scorsese finally won his first Best Directing Oscar for one of his weakest films, The Departed. In many ways, Nolan’s Oscar will be more of an acknowledgement of his whole career than it is about Oppenheimer.

As for the acting Oscars, that’s more of a toss-up in a lot of categories. Cillian Murphy is currently the favorite in the Vegas odds* to win for Best Actor, but Paul Giamatti seems very well poised for the upset on this one for The Holdovers. The Academy doesn’t like to let a single movie sweep every category and, if they already plan to give this movie the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, which they clearly do, then they’re likely to give Best Actor to someone else, and Giamatti is the best candidate for that.

Over in the Best Supporting Actor category, Robert Downey Jr. is likely to win that one, but honestly I find his competition to be a bit weak. Admittedly I haven’t watched Poor Things yet so I can’t comment on how much Mark Ruffalo deserves his nomination (which, by the way, means that two of the Avengers are up for Best Supporting Actor this year), but I don’t see anyone else in this category besides Downey who really impressed me. Ryan Gosling doesn’t belong in this category at all, and I feel like he even acknowledged that himself. Robert De Niro’s performance in Killers of the Flower Moon was not convincing and I don’t know why he was even nominated other than the fact that he’s De Niro. And, as far as Sterling K. Brown in American Fiction, I can’t even remember his character in that movie so it certainly wasn’t a memorable performance.

In the Best Supporting Actress category, Emily Blunt received a well-deserved nomination but is unlikely to walk away with a win as the Vegas odds have her as third most likely to win behind Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers and Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple. While I loved Emily Blunt’s performance in this movie, I absolutely adore Da’Vine Joy Randolph and I’m really excited to see her win this award, which she’s very likely to do.

Moving farther down in the awards, American Fiction is narrowly favored to win Best Adapted Screenplay over Oppenheimer. The Vegas odds have this one being pretty close, but I like American Fiction for this category because Best Screenplay awards are often used as consolation prizes for comedies, as the Academy doesn’t tend to like to give comedies Best Picture awards. Oppenheimer is likely to win for best editing, though, and it deserves that because its non-linear storytelling style requires good editing to make that work. Also, the bomb test scene was cut together phenomenally, so it definitely deserves that win.

Once I’ve finished watching Poor Things, I’ll have seen all 10 movies nominated for Best Picture, and then I’ll be back with my round-up of the Oscars to talk about who I think will win what and what I think deserves to win what. But it seems inevitable that Oppenheimer is going to be the Best Picture winner this year, and it’s easy to see why. Oppenheimer is an immense artistic achievement and a chilling cautionary tale about modern warfare. It reminds us of one of the United States’ most shameful decisions, one that was heavily applauded at the time but which we now look back on in horror and disgust. While Oppenheimer will win a lot of awards, its true achievement will hopefully be in reminding us all that an atrocity like those committed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki should never be repeated.

Oppenheimer is currently streaming on Peacock.

Photo courtesy of Instagram

*It occurred to me the other day that I should clarify that I’m only using Vegas odds because they help me predict who is going to win. In no way am I encouraging anyone from gambling on the Oscars, especially not here in Colorado, as it is not currently legal here.